Our constitutional crisis is already here

[Dill]

(09-29-2021, 05:09 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Just curious, how does this differ with Democrat efforts to abolish the filibuster or pack the SCOTUS?  We all know the only reason neither of those two have happened is because two senators, Sinema and Manchin, have shown a spine and refuse to go along with them.  . . .  Also, please don't bother responding with a two page essay, I literally have no patience for it.

Let's see if I can accommodate your attention span here.

Voting to abolish the filibuster to re-establish majority rule is an effort to restore and maintain democracy against superminority control.

Creating laws to place control of election certification in one party's hands is an effort to negate democracy to maintain superminority control. Same for laws restricting voting rights.

Democrats have been and are seriously discussing the filibuster. That is an "effort." But so far as I know, there is no party push to pack the courts--though that could come in response to McConnell's awarding court appointments to Trump which belonged to Obama and Biden.

(09-29-2021, 05:09 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote:  Also, please don't bother with the unconstitutional argument, as we all know that if what the GOP was doing in the states you reference were unconstitutional they'd have already been challenged on those grounds.  

Well, I don't know that "if what the GOP was doing in the states [I] reference were unconstitutional they'd have already been challenged on those grounds." They have been challenged on their voter rights restrictions.

The question now is how the challenge will be received by a court with three Trump justices. Laws shifting certification to legislatures will probably not be tested until 2022.

And there is also the question of "what is Constitutional?" One party is pushing legal and political practice into grey areas not yet addressed by Constitutional law, and perhaps not the Constitution itself. That is why Kagan is using the word "crisis."

(09-29-2021, 05:09 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Both efforts include changing the rules to benefit the party advocating for them.  Neither has actually occurred but you only seem to be concerned with one.  Why is that? 

With reference to changing the rules, why do you say "neither has actually occurred"? Many states have passed new voter restriction laws, and Georgia has already bypassed its Secretary of State: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/upshot/georgia-election-law-risk.html.

Certainly ALL legislators' efforts to change rules are to "benefit the party advocating for them." But no serious political analyst takes that "revelation" to mean all such efforts are therefore equivalent, equally partisan, equally hostile to public interest and the greater good.

One determines that by looking at the intended (which may be unstated) effects of laws and their actual beneficiaries. 

So I "only seem to be concerned with one" because that party appears bent on changing rules to keep power it could not win in open and free elections. 

"Both sides" aren't doing it.